endmsblog

Shortly after the launch of ENDMS2, JAG received a notification from its application hosting service provider that they were discontinuing their application hosting services as of December 31, 2014. To minimize ENDMS downtime and provide a one month buffer in the event of problems, ENDMS will be moved to a new provider over the Thanksgiving holiday. Maintenance will begin Friday, November 28, 2014, and conclude, at the latest, by the end of the day Sunday, November 30, 2014.

During the Pre-NTS and NTS sessions, we received a lot of great feedback and suggestions for ENDMS2. Since then, we've been working hard to implement as many of those recommendations as possible. Fortunately, we were able to implement the overwhelming majority of your requests. Taking the time to implement those requests, however, has delayed release by a day or two.

As discussed at NTS, the planned release date was August 1st. ENDMS will be taken offline tomorrow, July 31st, to start the database conversion process, but I expect that process to take more than a day so ENDMS2 may not come online until August 2nd or later. The database changes are extensive and take a long time to process.

Please remember these important details for the ENDMS2 release:

If you use Internet Explorer, you must run at least IE 10.0 or newer. 8.0 is very common but will not work. Chrome, Firefox, or Safari is preferred.

The system tries to be tolerant of screen resolutions and font sizes, but certain elements may break under extreme conditions. The interface works best with a browser running at least 1280 pixels wide with the default (normal/medium) font.

All user accounts must include a valid e-mail address.

All user accounts will be disabled for release. Managers must enable accounts to allow Specialists access to the system.

All existing passwords will be removed. All users will need to create their own passwords using the Forgot Password function once their account is enabled by their manager.

The ENDMS IP address is changing so you may need to work with your IT department to ensure access through firewalls.

If you have any questions prior to release, please contact endms@jag.org. After release, assuming your problem is not related to logging into ENDMS2, please use the Support sharing option in the Communicator.

Beyond bringing a variety of new reports to ENDMS, ENDMS2 is also bringing an entirely new reporting architecture designed to make report generation much less cumbersome. Here is a screenshot of the new reporting system:

Possibly the most requested feature in the history of ENDMS is the ability to retain your work following a session timeout. This gets a little tricky from a security standpoint because JAG really doesn't want machines left open with private data visible on the screen. To strike a better balance, though, ENDMS2 provides a system similar to those rolled out by banks in the last few years.

As most know, ENDMS2 is under development and slated for a January 2014 release. Between now and when I launch the first demo, I wanted to introduce you to some of the new interfaces you will find in ENDMS2. To get started, let's look at navigation.

Due to unusually high traffic, E-NDMS is struggling to keep up with demand. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do on the administrative side other than ride out the storm. If you don't absolutely need to be in the system this afternoon, it might be a good idea to wait until later this evening or tomorrow.

Our authentication system database was damaged as a result of a service outage this morning. Some users who were able to logon fine this morning are no longer able to access the system. I will restore access as soon as possible, but it might be later this evening before all accounts are recovered.

In reviewing the requests for updates to E-NDMS, I noticed one for a spell check function. Fortunately for us, most modern browsers already provide a spell check function. Notice in the screen shot below the words underlined in the Model Services text field.

It's been a while since I've updated the E-NDMS blog, but as JAG begins looking toward updating E-NDMS, I wanted to start collecting feedback from our Specialists, Managers, and CSA on what changes they want and need. Some needs are obvious but others are more subtle. Please keep an eye on the E-NDMS home page for new posts and take a look at anything that interests you. If you want to leave comments on the post, follow the article title link to www.JAG.org, and login to the comment section with your E-NDMS username and password.